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There are a lot of benefits to being a coastal city.

My hometown of Charleston, South Carolina is no exception.

The Schooner Pride is one such benefit.

A replica schooner you can take into the harbor on a perfect spring day, or a cold blustery one as it were.

Whether you're into sailing, surfing, or just out to sea the dolphins there's no denying the harbor is an essential part of our city, and then there's the critical economic boon of shipping and oceanfront tourism, not to mention the fresh seafood.

There's a cost to being a coastal city as well.

And we're seeing this cost increase with interest.

Climate change is contributing to sea level rise and extreme weather patterns that are impacting communities from pole to pole.

It's also the case that some communities and industries may pay a higher cost than others.

So I decided to take a look in my own backyard and see how this global problem is impacting our pretty little coastal community.

[music playing] [non-english speech] [music playing] Once a beachfront recreation site for the African-American community, Mosquito Beach now harbors a sustainable oyster bed managed by a father and son under the name of Browns Oyster Supply.

Richard and Terrell Brown ferry us out to the beds to show us what their operation is all about.

We're also joined by Jody, a conservationist turned oyster harvester, working with the Browns.

And though Earl and I are not legally allowed to harvest oysters on the bed we sure got an up close look at the process.

You all right?

Oh, you got boots on.

Waders on.

No Oh.

Back up, back up.

Damn, man.

You want to go with Joe?

Terrell, you're no longer the favorite.

I wasn't ever the favorite.

You ready to get in that little crack right there?

Can it fit right there?

That's what I'm talking about.

OK guys.

Can't go no further.

This bluff is really pluffy.

This is nothing there.

There's like nothing, yet.

That's what I'm saying.

So can you guys explain what pluff mud is.

Pluff mud, that's the soft mud, and sometimes it's got an odor.

Why does it have an odor?

Decaying organic matter.

Beautiful, stinky smell, man.

I can't tell if it's because Jody is small that it works easier, or what.

Oh, yeah she got a less way to go down, right?

Well, there's tricks.

Like if you have a basket with you, push it like a shopping cart.

It'll keep you from bogging down.

You crawl right in.

Mosquito Beach, I mean, what's special about Mosquito Beach?

Mosquito Beach was established in, I think, 1947, before integration.

This is where the Black folks come and partied and had a good weekend, you know?

Enjoy themselves.

They used to have bumper cars and-- Oh, no kidding.

And all kind of stuff here on Mosquito Beach.

Yeah, that was a long time ago.

And these are clustered, right?

Biggest and prettiest clusters you want to see.

The main oyster has to be at least three inches?

At leas three inches.

And then what's the deal with the adjacent oysters?

Watch me.

All right.

Knocking off.

Dead shell, the little one that's called culling, culling and place.

Knocking off the small one, the dead shell.

Yeah, culling and place is very sustainable.

We hit the small oyster back.

That oyster has the chance to reproduce and eat.

Then a year later it will have grown-- A year later, sometimes same time in the season, a couple of months.

Almost like trimming the split ends on you hair.

A lot of times you make the area healthier when you take out the big oysters, and a lot more of the smaller ones can grow and make bigger ones at the same time.

It's pretty good for the area.

But when you've got a lot of pickers out here that don't really know how to pick them, and so they carry everything.

The DNR, in turn, has to close the season on the state beds so that they can regrow because they tear it up so bad.

You feel like climate change is changing things?

Well, I'll tell you one thing, oysters are not as plentiful as they used to be.

The rising sea levels are going to impact the industry in the future, in years to come.

Over harvesting and things like that are the acute problems that you can fix now.

Is the old adage about the months that end in E. R., is that true?

Absolutely false.

When I was a young fellow the older folks used to tell you that if you eat oysters in the summertime, you'll go blind.

It's a seasonal thing so the oyster could replenish itself.

How long has your dad been doing this?

So I would say he's been doing it since he's a kid.

He's 68, so about 60 years.

Yeah, my granddaddy, they all worked the river back in the days.

Worked the river and had farms.

Had lima beans, okra, tomatoes, watermelon, anything.

Now you're making me hungry.

Yeah, but that tastes good.

Now if you want, you can go ahead and crack you open one and eat it.

Gulp it down.

Nice eating one.

Look at that.

Let's get an eating one.

Here.

Is that a good one?

Yeah, man, that should be real salty.

Where's my cocktail sauce?

In the car.

Hot sauce is what we really use.

Oh.

Mmm, be real salty.

It is salty.

That's good.

Terrell, when you guys are working, how many oysters do you usually do?

My best day, going two hours before low tide, picking about two hours after, I've gotten about 21.

21 bushels?

Mm-hmm.

And that's a bushel?

No, it's a bushel and a half.

I imagine that this is one industry that really you can't mechanize, right?

Our operation here, culling in place, you can't mechanize it.

Who's the harder worker, you or Terrell?

He been doing it way longer, and he raised me, so you got-- yeah, he takes that one.

I have to laugh on that one.

It's him.

Regardless of who put in the work, there's no better way to end a day of oyster picking than with a low country oyster roast, especially after an off camera pluff mud incident.

[music playing] Good food, good friends, good music.

Terrell, Jody, and I stepped away from the party to chat a little bit more about the importance of preserving this amazing natural resource.

Our job is to cull and place and at the same time maintain the oyster beds for next year and future use.

Year round we're obligated to put back what we pick.

Even here in a low country oyster roast we've got the bins that were collected in the oyster shells.

Does that help you to replenish?

Yes, sir.

They have marked stations that you put the shells in, and they quarantine them for about six months.

Why can't you just put them straight in?

Straight from a restaurant to the marsh you could be introducing a lot of harmful bacteria.

How long does it take for it to start to replenish?

The dead shell method, they don't actually grow back.

It gives a chance for a baby oysters to cling on to the dead shell.

Ah, just something to hold on to.

Yeah.

Baby oysters are free flowing with no locomotion of their own, so they need a root to latch onto.

So if you remove everything without replacing it-- Just washes away.

You're kind of sabotaging that population.

They need an anchor.

Why are oysters, out of anything you can talk about or be interested in, why is that interesting?

It's one of the few forms of fishing where you can move in from out of state, and just pay a certain amount of money, and then you get the license.

A lot of other places require you to put in work to make sure that the population of what you're harvesting isn't hurt whatsoever, but you can just get the license and you can start picking, which can be really detrimental to the oyster population because then it's all take, take, take with no replacement.

Oystering definitely has the illusion of being really easy money.

You can just hop into the game and start filling your pockets, but there's a right way and a wrong way to do it, and Browns Oyster Supply is absolutely doing it the right way.

Saving something for future generations instead of just taking everything that there is and selling it and without sustainability.

I will tell you, it doesn't feel like easy money when I was out there.

It's a lot of mucking about.

Is there a single day you come home that you don't have mud in every single place that you can find it?

It's not for lazy people.

It makes you question your life decisions.

I hope we get to do it again sometime.

Definitely, appreciate the opportunity.

Cheers.

All right, thank you guys.

Glad y'all had a great time.

Compared to the need for sustainable harvesting, sea level rise is a distant but looming threat to the oyster industry.

So we headed downtown where things look very different.

Charleston is over 350 years old and mostly built on top of filled in creeks and waterways so it's no stranger to flooding.

I spoke with Mayor John Tecklenburg on the battery where a $65 million project is underway.

It's going to raise the height of the current seawall in a direct response to sea level rise.

It will protect one of the most iconic neighborhoods in Charleston, and one can't help but notice, one of the richest.

This section right here is the new wall.

Correct, we've raised it about 3 feet higher than it used to be, and the foundation is strong enough to support an additional 3 to 4, 5 feet even, of additional wall as future sea level rise occurs This will go all the way around the battery all the way up to the other side.

That's correct.

You get a hurricane like Hugo, you get a storm surge that comes in here, doesn't it make a bathtub effect?

This will provide protection up to about 10 feet above mean sea level.

Hugo was about 11 feet, but every other storm we've seen in the last six years would not come over this wall, but they came over the previous wall.

You can't plan for once in a thousand year event.

Where's that risk reward?

That's the hard part of politics.

That's the hard part of being a mayor, I guess.

Well, we work with scientists, NOAA, with the Corps of Engineers, even our Dutch partners.

He's referring to a city initiative known as the Dutch Dialogues.

The Netherlands has over 800 years of experience in water adaptation, and they brought that experience to Charleston.

The world's experts on climate change and sea level rise.

And one of the key elements that the Dutch promote, which we wholeheartedly buy into, is when you do a protection project like this, you also make it beautiful.

You make it a public amenity that the public will enjoy, that your citizens will love, just walking on this esplanade and this beautiful setting along the water.

Always look to get a multiple benefit out of the project.

The mayor took me to the high battery, which is the upper wall that the low battery is being raised to match.

It's really remarkable.

We've seen a 14 inch rise in over 100 years.

But here's the thing, in the last 20 years the rate of increase has quadrupled.

And we reliably predict the sea level right here in Charleston Harbor will raise another 2 to 3 feet in the next 50 years.

So we have to get ready for it now.

We're a medium sized city, but with a global problem.

So in addition to the wall we also have the tidal ebbs and flows.

In fact, we have this thing called a king tide, is it?

That's right.

These higher than normal kind of tides, and then we have flooding in parts of the city.

So when I was a kid growing up here, they say that there were only five days a year back in the 60s when the tide was over 7 feet.

Last year it was over 100 times, and it's predicted by 2050 to be every other day that we would have a high tide over 7 feet.

So you need pumps, you need new infrastructure, reutilize the old, build surge protection.

There's not one answer to it.

So this is really-- this is gorgeous area, and these are the big iconic houses and stuff like that.

A little bit later we're going to talk to some folks over on the Eastside community, and again, they continue to struggle with some of these tidal flooding issues.

And there's some feeling that what we do here is disproportionately helpful to those that have, as opposed to those that need.

Well drainage has to be addressed in all parts of our city.

On the Eastside we've added already some of those check valves I told you about.

Over the last few months, we've spent hundreds of thousands dollars with vacuum trucks just keeping what we've got clean and flowing.

The best buck you can spin is to keep infrastructure you've got working.

Do you feel like we've progressed as we start thinking about our city?

Are we starting to be more caretakers of all of the community, or how do you weigh this?

Particularly in a historical city, lots of history, a beautiful place where newer developments have come along with modern engineering and storm water considerations, there's not a problem, but almost all of the historic part of the city has drainage issues.

Because it was all built on fill and we filled in lots of creeks and wetlands.

We'd never get away with doing that today.

You wouldn't want to do it.

There's a huge amount of retrofitting and new approaches to managing water that we're doing now.

And you do spend some time thinking about how do we help those communities like that Eastside, areas like that.

Oh, absolutely.

You are a mayor that's spent a lot of time with all walks of life in this city.

Charleston is attempting to keep up with sea level rise and spending a lot of money to do so.

The city is working hard to do it in an equitable way across the municipality.

But they don't always succeed and they can't help everyone all at once.

We visited a neighborhood that's been threatened by flooding for generations.

A beautiful historic community that still feels they're being overlooked.

Welcome to the Eastside.

Miss Mary's Sweet Shop has sat in the heart of the Eastside community for over four decades.

Opened in 1971 by Miss Mary herself, it was a community hub from day one.

It's now run by Miss Mary's son, Joe, the unofficial historian of the neighborhood.

Everyone told us if we are going to go by the East Side, we had to talk to Joe.

We stopped in for a snack.

I love me some pickled eggs, so.

We need to call you hawk eye, 'cause it was behind the bananas and he spot them.

Are you a fan of pickled eggs?

No.

Have you seen it?

Look at that color.

Oh, man, that's good.

I like that.

I mean, this is southern.

Yeah, that is.

How much is this pickled egg?

69 a piece.

Put it on my bill.

Yeah.

You have people do kind of IOUs, right?

Is that-- Yes, yeah on their bills and stuff like that.

My mama did the same thing.

There were times that parents were busy and couldn't do something they just tell the child, when you get out of school, go to Miss Mary.

And she'll get stopped right there and she'll go fix them something to eat.

Take care of them like that's her child, you know.

We stepped outside to speak with Joe and his neighbor Latonya who runs Eastside Community Development Corp., a community resource center across the street from the sweet shop.

They gave us an insider's perspective on how flooding is impacting this lively historic neighborhood, their home.

Has gotten worse, has gotten worse to where we're standing that we actually had a foot of water, but you go back to 1959 that water only came up right there where you see that blue can at.

But how do we address what needs to be done.

And the Dutch Dialogue and that conversation that we've had, one statement was made at that meeting about these drains and the connection to the harbor and those pneumatic valves that would open and close on high tide.

If they would do one or two a year, we could get it done before flooding get real serious within this area.

Latonya, out of all the people that you serve, what percentage of them are impacted by flooding?

85% It's a thing for everybody.

Their cars, they usually lose everything.

You could see them put their furniture out.

Then on a corner of Reed and America Street, it floods.

Then by Sanders Clyde School, it floods.

Where those children live over there, it floods.

How does it impact the family, though, once you have flooding?

It's mold.

You have to throw a lot of your stuff away.

You have to wash walls down if you can afford to replace it with bleach.

It's like starting all over again, over and over again.

And it's such a vibrant community in this area, and again, Joe, you've been here forever, man.

They've had the same type of problems for generations.

The insurance per house could possibly go to $18,000 a year.

That's an emphasis where we need to have more discussion.

They just did an assessment so that means more money, or maybe, if we can't raise our houses, then we might have to lose our houses.

Is it a little bit about political and economic?

I'm not sure.

I'm not a politician.

I'm just a mama, an advocate of my community.

I just know that with people not making that much money, and they're trying to hold on to their homes, and the flooding issue it just makes it kind of difficult because you're facing multiple things.

Is this a community that's in trouble?

Yes.

I think so.

I would like to see the city give more resources, and they've been doing a better job at cleaning our drains out a little bit more.

With all these developments coming in our community maybe they can have an impact fee that just would be earmarked for flooding to help us out.

I think the Dutch Dialogue had lots of things that I don't know if we're trying it yet-- Well, no we're not.

But I would like to see us try to see what that looks like for our community.

And our children wouldn't have to walk through the dirty floodwater, or we wouldn't have to lose our cars, we wouldn't have to lose our furniture, our insurance.

With climate change it's just going to keep getting worse.

And if flooding were the only issue threatening this community things would be dire enough.

But when Joe stepped back into the shop to help a customer, Latonya told us about the issue of heirs' property and the way gentrification is reshaping the neighborhood.

Heirs' property is when a family has property, but they do not leave a will and what-- You mean that they've been here for generations.

Only for a long time and the matriarch or the patriarch has died.

And what often happens is, maybe, one family member will pay the taxes, and then all of a sudden all these family members want a piece of the pie.

It only takes one family member to sell their share, and the family is in jeopardy of losing the property.

And gets picked up by a developer, or resold to somebody else, and now you've replaced generational property with somebody new.

And it's heartbreaking to see it because some of these family homes have been in their family for generations.

And it's all legal.

It's all legal.

We lost, I think, 89 to 90 homes.

Oh my gosh.

That may be associated with heirs' property.

So the role of Eastside Community Development, one of those things is to educate people on the importance of what is heirs' property, and then what are the importance of legal wills, and really keeping people in the neighborhood too because rents go up.

Well, the rent is now $2,500.

In this area?

In this area here.

Right, and if you're working food and bev, or you're working some of these, or you're a teacher.

You can't afford $2,500.

I see that the city is trying to come up with creative ways to provide affordable housing, but they still miss a large population unless people make more money.

How do you pay light, water, and eat?

You don't.

Yeah, you don't.

Per capita, the eviction rates in Richmond and Charleston are some of the highest in the entire country.

And they went up rapidly.

How much pressure is it on you to make sure that this thing doesn't change for the bad?

It's a lot of pressure.

We do a lot of things we feed our seniors, we provide a virtual learning hub for our students, computer class, virtual interviews, we connect them to jobs, providing Wi-Fi to the community because a lot of people did not have Wi-Fi.

Recently, we've just gone through gentrification, but it's happened.

We're all adjusting, and we're trying to find how we can unify and be one community.

It's a daunting issue, but Joe jumped back in to tell us why this community means so much to him.

I grew up here on this corner.

Being raised up here was not just my parents, but also the conversation with my neighbors next door.

It felt like everyone was part of your family.

That interaction that we were sharing, that Sunday environment where we all was home on the porch and enjoying family life, and being able to talk to each other and really share with each other.

That keeps me here because I want to do the same thing with so many of the kids.

The help that we can leave our love in this world by how we care for the people that are around us.

Our community.

Yeah, for our community.

That's awesome.

We'll never leave.

It's a beautiful community.

I love it.

Yes, yes it is.

Joe's simple message, we're stronger together.

Across generations, race, and economic classes we have to continue to forge partnerships to move forward.

This is critical whether you're a small business with sustainability in the future in mind, or a mayor trying to plan equitably for all of your constituents.

We can all support people like Latonya and the work they do if we make the effort.

As we've seen right here in Charleston, climate change will ultimately impact all of us, but it continues to disproportionately impact lower income and minority groups.

And it's critical that our city, like the planet, find a balance in its response because only then can we all continue to enjoy life in this great city for generations to come.

There's so much more to explore and we want you to join us on the Good Road.

For more in depth content, meet us on the internet at thegoodroad.tv.

Hear more great stories, connect to organizations, and make sure you download our podcast, Philanthropology.

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[music playing]